A visual novel is an interactive fiction game, featuring mostly static graphics, most often using anime-style art or occasionally live-action stills (and sometimes video footage). As the name might suggest, they resemble mixed-media novels.
In Japanese terminology, a distinction is often made between visual novels proper (abbreviated NVL), which consist predominantly of narration and have very few interactive elements, and adventure games (abbreviated AVG or ADV), which may incorporate problem-solving and other types of gameplay. This distinction is normally lost outside Japan, where both NVLs and ADVs are commonly referred to as "visual novels" by international fans. Visual novels and ADVs are especially prevalent in Japan, where they made up nearly 70% of the PC game titles released in 2006.
Visual novels are distinguished from other game types by their extremely minimal gameplay. Typically the majority of player interaction is limited to clicking to keep the text, graphics and sound moving (most recent games offer "play" or "fast-forward" toggles that make even this unnecessary).
Most visual novels have multiple storylines and many endings; the gameplay mechanic in these cases typically consists of intermittent multiple-choice decision points, where the player selects a direction in which to take the game.
Triangle Again: Animation and music are melded together in Triangle Again, an interactive flick-action game from Production I.G. and musician Toshiaki Otsubo. As the story goes, a young J-pop music prodigy named Akari Tateshina loses her mentor. With Akari's guiding light gone from the picture, an uncertain destiny awaits her. The Japanese music industry churns out and recycles talent at a cruel pace but that won't do. Help Akari practice, train and hone her singing voice in order to keep her career on the proper trajectory until her debut as a J-pop star. Make that a lasting J-Pop starlet. Choice of music also helps or hinders her possible success in the industry.
Billed as a music adventure game, Triangle Again has players star as a female high school student and interact with the game's characters via a note-based conversation system. Gameplay is confined to talking to anime-style characters on static backgrounds, interspersed with fully animated story cut-scenes featuring the songs Don't Look Back, Believe Yourself, and Endless Journey, among others. Previously released on Xbox in 2002. The songs in the PS2 version are in English, while the ones in the Xbox release are in Japanese.
Additionally to typical set of options for this type of game (i.e. clickable versus auto-scrolling text), Triangle Again offers positioning of the text messages (up or down) and also support regular and widescreen picture presentation.
There are several licensed songs used in the game as protagonist's song hits when she sings them during animated scenes.
CHARACTERS:
Akari Tateshina
Masaru Kiryu
Kasumi Midou
Naoko Sakuma
Yumi Ishizaka
MANUFACTURER'S DESCRIPTION:
New sense of adventure game made ??gorgeous staff who dealt with many masterpieces and artists producers, and production studios come together. I adopt a novel system and music story that changes with changes in feelings of unreasonable and sound. I have painted the figure hero Tateshina lamp packed up the stairs of the entertainment world.
FEATURES:
- First person perspective.
- 2D graphics
- Cartoon graphics
- Romance & Anime themes.
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